For April’s deep dive into our PC Game Tracker, we looked at Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, which jumped two spots in our Top 20 Most Popular Core PC Games Worldwide. This came after the launch of the game’s latest expansion pack: The Witchwood. With a spooky theme and new collectible cards and mechanics, The Witchwood is the eighth expansion for Hearthstone since its initial release in 2014.

Using our PC Game Tracker, which covers 42 countries worldwide, we explored the effect of this recent expansion on the game’s popularity. Analysis showed that 20.7% of core PC gamers played Hearthstone in April, compared to 18.2% in March. This increase in players contributed to the game’s rise from #4 to #2 in our Top 20 Most Popular Core PC Games.

According to our Game Streaming Tracker, streaming viewership for Hearthstone also increased from 28.3 million hours watched in March to 43.2 million in April, with most of the views generated by individual streamers compared to esports streams.

HIGHEST POPULARITY AND BIGGEST GROWTH IN NORTH AMERICA

Of the core PC gamers in North America, 25.2% played Hearthstone in April, more than any other region. Hearthstone makes up 11.5% of all play time in the region.

Looking at month-on-month growth, the game’s player base grew in every region, with the biggest relative growth also coming from North America: 12.1%. Growth for other regions was 10.2% for Latin America, 7.6% for Asia-Pacific, and 8.2% for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

#1 IN UNITED STATES AND SOUTH KOREA

In an impressive rise, Hearthstone overtook both League of Legends and Fortnite for #1 in the United States in April. The share of players that played Hearthstone in April was 25.1%, well above the global average. Blizzard’s popular collectable card game accounted for 11.5% of total playtime in the United States, also higher than the global average for the game (9.6%).

Looking at the country with the biggest share of players relative to its core PC gamer population, South Korea takes the lead. The devotion of South Korean core PC gamers is evident in our data, with a staggering 50.4% of core PC gamers having played Hearthstone in April. With this big player share, the game continues to hold a firm grip on the #1 spot in South Korea’s ranking. PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, the #2 most popular game in the country, is far behind with a player share of 32.2%. Hearthstone represents 23.3% of total playtime in South Korea in April, more than double the global average.

MOST PLAYED CORE PC GAMES IN APRIL

Blizzard Entertainment’s Heroes of the Storm rose two spots in April, from #16 to #14, after seeing some long-awaited and well-received improvements to the game in April. Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 did very well after release, crushing the franchise’s previous sales records. The game entered the Top 20 at #16 in April after being released at the very end of March. Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim gained a position from #20 to #19 following the release of a stand-alone VR version for PC in April.

THE PC GAME TRACKER

Newzoo’s PC Game Tracker offers a monthly, in-depth overview of more than 3,000 games and 100 publishers across 42 countries. The tracker allows clients to easily identify and track the key markets for each game, publisher, and genre, and to gain a deep understanding of player behavior with metrics such as play time, session time, and cross-over engagement/churn with other games. The data is derived from Overwolf’s user base of 12 million PC gaming enthusiasts and can be easily sliced and diced in multiple ways using our new Tableau-powered dashboard.

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